They Were Expendable

John Brickley (Robert Montgomery) believes in PT boats, and as a lowly U.S. Navy lieutenant stationed in the Philippines, that makes him a radical thinker. "Your boats maneuver beautifully," an admiral (Charles Trowbridge) tells him, "but if I'm going into combat, I prefer something a little more substantial." The gently delivered but stinging dismissal stirs the…
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Overview

John Brickley (Robert Montgomery) believes in PT boats, and as a lowly U.S. Navy lieutenant stationed in the Philippines, that makes him a radical thinker. "Your boats maneuver beautifully," an admiral (Charles Trowbridge) tells him, "but if I'm going into combat, I prefer something a little more substantial." The gently delivered but stinging dismissal stirs the resentment of Lt. "Rusty" Ryan (John Wayne), who tartly tells Brickley that he wants to be transferred to destroyers. The Pearl Harbor bombing makes transfer impossible, especially with the Japanese preparing to invade the islands. So Brickley and Ryan go to work, first as message carriers between the Philippines and Corregidor, then, finally, as ship hunters. They record some successes, but it's a doomed effort: The Americans are hopelessly outnumbered by the Japanese, and with almost all of the Pacific Fleet destroyed at Pearl Harbor, they know help won't arrive to save them. As the Japanese push the U.S. forces back, Brickley and Ryan and their crews hop from island to island, scrounging supplies and taking casualties but keeping up the fight. Just as it appears that they will be forced to fight on Corregidor against the Japanese, they get rescued; they're ordered home to promote their PT-boat successes, and they take the last plane out, hoping to return and avenge their defeats. ~ Nick Sambides, Jr.

Editorial Reviews

All Movie Guide

A major work in the career of John Ford, They Were Expendable reflects the great director's love of the U.S. Navy and admiration of the men and women who fought the Second World War. It's a product of wartime, meant to be stirringly patriotic and occasionally saccharine. It almost qualifies as a U.S. Navy product: Star Robert Montgomery was a PT boat captain and Ford and screenwriter Frank "Spig" Wead were high-ranking Navy men. Yet They Were Expendable is nevertheless an admirably restrained and somber work, especially compared to other jingoistic films of the period. As befits its subject, the Navy's post-Pearl Harbor losses, Ford's deep-focus camerawork is an often gorgeous collection of grays and blacks. Ford had just finished an Oscar-winning documentary, Battle of Midway, when he started this movie, and it shows. Wead's script is an appealingly nuts-and-bolts look at Navy men that mostly avoids obligatory flag-waving; even the subplot romance between John Wayne's Lt. "Rusty" Ryan and Donna Reed's Lt. Sandy Davyss is un-melodramatic. Ford uses realistic Florida locations and sprinkles documentary-like close-ups throughout the film. The close-ups get somewhat precious by film's end, but they're effective. Ford blessedly leaves out his banana-peel humor, and in Montgomery has an actor who centers the movie with an interestingly lean and modulated performance despite having no backstory and almost no emotional outpourings -- he scarcely raises his voice. They Were Expendable offers glimmers of the psychological complexity that marks later Ford films like The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. It's a classic that hasn't received its proper recognition.